(Reuters) – Russian forces pounded the outskirts of Kyiv and a besieged city in northern Ukraine, a day after Moscow promised to scale down operations there in what the West dismissed as a ploy to regroup by invaders suffering heavy losses.
FIGHTING
* Russia’s defence ministry said its forces were regrouping near Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv to focus on other key areas and complete the “liberation” of the breakaway eastern Donbas region.
* The mayor of Chernihiv in northern Ukraine, Vladyslav Astroshenko, said Russian bombardment had intensified over the past 24 hours, with more than 100,000 people trapped with supplies to last about a week.
* Russia is shelling nearly all cities along the frontline separating Ukrainian government-controlled territory from areas held by Russian-backed separatists in the eastern Donetsk region, the regional Donetsk governor said.
* About 80 civilians have been killed and around 450 wounded in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolayiv since Russia invaded Ukraine, the local mayor said.
DIPLOMACY
* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he discussed specific defensive support with U.S. President Joe Biden in an hour-long call on Wednesday.
* Russian President Vladimir Putin was misled by advisers who were too scared to tell him how poorly the war in Ukraine is going and how damaging Western sanctions have been, a U.S. official said, citing declassified intelligence.
* Ramzan Kadyrov, the powerful head of Russia’s republic of Chechnya, said Moscow would make no concessions in its war in Ukraine, deviating from the official line and suggesting the Kremlin’s own negotiator was wrong.
ECONOMY
* All Russia’s big exports could soon be in roubles, the Kremlin signalled.
* Germany will continue to pay for Russian gas in euros or dollars, a government spokesman said, after Russia’s President Putin spoke with German Chancellor Scholz.
HUMANITARIAN CONCERNS
* Russia may have committed war crimes by killing civilians and destroying hospitals in its pounding of Ukrainian cities, the top United Nations human rights official said.
* The number of Ukrainians fleeing abroad is now above four million, the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said.
QUOTES
“I think their morale dropped. Most of them already understood that they made a huge mistake when they came here,” Maksym, a Ukrainian soldier, said of Russian forces in the eastern Kharkiv region.
(Compiled by Gareth Jones)
